Ayesha Curry on Her New Food Network Show and What She's Making Steph After the NBA Playoffs

It’s not always easy being married to an NBA superstar, but Ayesha Curry, wife of Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry, makes it seem all too easy. The 27-year-old Canadian-born chef and doting mom to daughters Riley, 3, and Ryan, 9 months, not only prepares all the meals for her household—her family’s adorable kitchen antics, heavily documented on Instagram and Vine—have landed her a new cooking show on The Food Network and a book deal with Little, Brown and Company. What's more, this month, she's partnered with Glad to raise awareness for food waste in the U.S. Below, she talked more about her new on-air gig, her go-to post-playoff meal for Steph, and why her name always seems to be trending on Twitter.

Tell us about your new show, tentatively titled At Home with Ayesha.You’re going to see a lot more about who I really am and what I can do in the kitchen, but everything’s still going to be accessible and easy. My family members and friends will be helping me out, too—we go on field trips to different places in the Bay, so it’ll really highlight what northern California has to offer in terms of farms and restaurants.

How’d you first become interested in cooking?I’ve had a passion for it since I was a little girl. My mom is Jamaican and Chinese and my dad is Polish and African-American, so I had a pretty diverse culinary background to work with. And I grew up in Toronto, which is a big, giant cultural melting pot. I started preparing meals for my family when I was 12 because both of my parents worked, but I didn’t know that it was something I could make a career out of until I had my daughter and realized there were people out there who were interested in learning how to prepare a quick meal.

What’s your favorite thing to make with Riley?We love to make cupcakes, which isn’t necessarily the healthiest, but anything you’d make at home is automatically better than what you’d get at the store. She’s obsessed with watching baking videos on YouTube, so we try to reenact those sometimes. The other night, my mother-in-law was in town and she’s gluten-free, so we made gluten-free sweet potato orange blossom cupcakes. She’s a great little helper in the kitchen. She even has her own set of kid-friendly knives.

Riley gained some national attention when Steph brought her with him for a post-game interview during the NBA finals. Can we expect another cameo this year?We definitely didn’t expect everyone to react that way—it caught us so off-guard! But she was pretty spunky out there. Sadly, I don’t think she’ll be making an appearance this time around, though.

Can you please explain the genesis of the Chef Curry With The Pot video?My cousin, Devontée, is a rapper. Growing up, we would always do these parodies, so Steph was at practice one day and we decided to surprise him. Then he came home and wanted to make a video for it. I would’ve put on a nicer outfit and some makeup if I knew it was going to get so many hits!

What was in the pot, anyway?I actually ended up making chicken curry—no pun intended! [Laughs]

Speaking of, what’s Steph eating during the playoffs?Always a super grain, like quinoa, sweet potato, and a protein like chicken or salmon. I’ll make 10 at a time and put them in Glad containers so he can just grab ’em and go.

How about a post-playoff meal? We’re big on lamb in our house, so I’ll probably be making lamb chops, bacon, and scallops. It’s great because I can fit more than six at once in the pan, and there’s always someone who seems to magically appear at dinnertime.

What’s your go-to meal to make in a pinch?I’m a big fan of soups and stews because you can throw everything in a slow-cooker and leave it there for hours. They taste great in containers too, because they sit in the fridge and the flavors meld over night.

You also have a new cookbook, The Seasoned Life (available for pre-order, $17; amazon.com), coming out in September. What can we expect from that?It’s full of things that anybody from the single auntie to your grandpa could make. Steph even has his own meal in there. It’s the only thing he knows how to cook: a five-ingredient pasta. I like to say that, if I’m ever sick, I know what I’m eating.

It seems that every time there is a social media controversy surrounding women on Twitter, your name starts trending, probably because you’re considered to be the ideal wife and partner. How much do you acknowledge that, and how does it make you feel? I try and ignore it as much as I can, but sometimes I look, and what I notice is that it’s mostly men that are instigating the situation and using stuff that’s out there as leverage to make their point. It’s never okay to put other women down. But people are going to say what they want to say. I’m all about everyone being happy in their own space.

You May Like

Read More

Let's Make It Newsletter-Official

Never have InStyle FOMO again! Get the best fashion, beauty, celebrity exclusives and shopping advice straight to your inbox.